Jairam's Jives: January 2010

Monday, January 25, 2010

Golden Globe Awards 2010 - Winners

The 2010 Golden Globe Awards have been announced and the following is the list of winners.

Best Motion Picture - Drama
Avatar (review link)

Best performance by an actress in a motion picture - Drama
Emily Blunt - The Young Victoria

Best performance by an actor in a motion picture - Drama
Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart

Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical
The Hangover

Best performance by an actress in a motion picture – Comedy or Musical
Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia

Best performance by an actor in a motion picture – Comedy or Musical
Robert Downey Jr - Sherlock Holmes

Best Animated Feature Film
Up

Best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a motion picture
Monique – Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire

Best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a motion picture
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds (review link)

Best Director – Motion Picture
James Cameron – Avatar (review link)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Up in the air

Please click here to see the entire list of Golden Globe Nominations.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Invictus - Movie Review

As is public knowledge, Nelson Mandela was released from the Robben Island prison after 27 yrs of imprisonment in 1990 and went on to win the first post-apartheid elections in South Africa and become the first black president of the country. The story of “Invictus” takes off almost immediately when Mandela’s first priority is to ‘balance black aspirations with white fears’ because although apartheid had officially been banned from South African lives, it still stayed on in the minds of almost everybody in the country. The blacks were unwilling to forgive and forget the atrocities committed upon them and their forefathers by the settlers, while the whites were warily waiting for the black backlash now that they had a black president and blacks with equal rights.

While figuring out an effective way of dealing with the white-black hostilities Mandela hits upon the idea of using the Springboks, the country’s rugby team to bring together all the South African people to support a common cause, a small first step which he was sure would help build bridges between the various communities in the country. While this in itself was not such a bad idea, the fact that the Springboks themselves were going through a ‘crisis’ of sorts in terms of trying to break a losing streak complicated matters further.

As a first step, Mandela convinces the Rugby Board to retain the name and the colors of the Springboks (which had long been regarded as one of the most visible symbols of the apartheid era), and given that South Africa was set to host the Rugby World Cup in 1995, he invites the captain Francois Pienaar for a cup of tea. Although he doesn’t quite put it in as many words, he manages to get his ideas across to Francois regarding the fact that the Springboks, as a sports team had the ability to bring the entire country together in ways that probably couldn’t be done otherwise.

What follows is how Francois manages to convince his team-mates of this message, bring in a winning attitude within the team, galvanize black support for a team which they loved to hate, and go on to actually win the 1995 Rugby World Cup against all odds.

Now, while at the heart of it, Invictus for most part remains a sports-movie in that it follows the path of a team in dire straits and its ultimate turnaround to winning ways, the serious under-currents of post-apartheid South Africa are just too visible and strong to be ignored in this movie. The way Clint Eastwood, the director (oh, that wonderful genius, wonder when he’ll stop making good movies!!!) handles and balances both these parallel themes throughout the movie makes you forget whether this was a sports movie or one with a seriously loaded message. Net result, Invictus ends up being a very good movie with a strong message, a feel-good sports movie, in addition to the fact that it is almost completely based on true events.

The casting with Morgan Freeman probably playing the role of his life as Nelson Mandela, Matt Damon wonderfully portraying the introverted Francois Pienaar, and the entire supporting cast primarily playing characters from Mandela’s Presidential staff is picture perfect. Eastwood probably couldn’t have chosen better actors for each of their roles. And the side-script where the black Presidential Secret Service men ultimately bond with their white counterparts makes for a wonderful story by itself. All in all, in my opinion, this movie is a serious contender for at least one if not more Academy Awards this season.

LAMBScore for this movie

Related links
Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link
Rotten Tomatoes link

Trailer

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Avatar - Movie Review

There are movies, then there are 3-D movies, and then there is Avatar. With all the pre-release publicity, post-release rave reviews and the hype and hoop-la surrounding this movie, it was all but a matter of time before I actually caught it in a theatre. And thank God for the IMAX 3-D Screen in Hyderabad, I was able to enjoy this particular movie to its fullest extent, just the way James Cameron wanted his audience to enjoy it.

At the heart of it Avatar deals with a simple theme, how humans have completely plundered the earth of its natural resources and are actively engaged in the active pursuit of other planets with compatible natural resources and minerals to plunder, at any cost. Pandora, an earth-like moon of Polyphemus is the latest target, and Unobtanium is the precious mineral that RDA Corporation has targeted for harvesting for human survival. Just a small glitch in their plans however, are the Na’vi, the indigenous sapient humanoids who inhabit Pandora.

In an attempt to improve relations with the Na’vi, human scientists create human-Na’vi hybrids called avatars, controlled by genetically-matched human operators, a-la Matrix style. Humans plug into their controllers and lo and behold they can control their Na’vi avatars. Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-marine is the latest and last attempt by the humans to try peaceful reconciliation with the Na’vi and get their approval to mine Unobtanium from Pandora.

While Jake starts off on his mission, he is quite clear of his objectives, but a few things happen along the way which changes his attitude towards the Na’vi. Contrary to his beliefs, he learns that the Na’vi co-exist with their ecosystems, nature and planet in an unique manner. They believe that all creatures in Pandora contribute to the overall flow of energy and harmony in a manner that it is wrong to try and disturb or disrupt this harmony for any unnecessary reasons. Further, the fact that Jake falls head over heels for Neyitri, a female Na’vi complicates matters even further, as his loyalties are torn between his paraplegic human self and his relatively stronger, smarter Na’vi avatar.

What follows is a journey of how Jake is initiated into the Na’vi tribe of Omaticayas, how he gradually understands the Na’vi way of life, and comes to realize that the humans are actually repeating on Pandora what they did with Earth and its natural resources around a 100 years ago. What finally transpires is an epic battle in which Jake and the Omaticayas bring together all the Na’vi tribes on Pandora for a final confrontation with the humans.

As is the norm, good ultimately triumphs over evil, and once again, as is the norm, the crux of the movie lies in how exactly good manages to triumph over evil. A reasonably simplistic storyline, a tight screenplay, and some really good casting manage to hold Avatar in good stead.

Now while most movies fail to live upto their pre-release hype nowadays, James Cameron has managed to put together an awesome movie in the form of Avatar. The fact that this is a movie which pushes the barriers of technology, filmmaking and CGI in the industry speaks volumes for Cameron’s vision and his tenacity in seeing it through to completion. 3D movies, and CGI in movies will never be the same again after Avatar, and in my opinion, this movie pushes the envelope to such an extent that going forward, movies will either be referred to as ‘pre-Avatar’ movies or ‘post-Avatar’, at least in terms of how technology has been used in them.

One request I have for readers of this blog is to go to theatres and watch this movie, because believe me, no LCD/Plasma TV or funky Home Theatre system will ever do justice to this epoch James Cameron movie. This has to be seen in all its glory on the big screen. And people who know me well, know fully well that I would never suggest going to a theatre to watch a movie unless it was worth every penny and every minute of the effort that is required to do so.

LAMBScore for this movie

Friday, January 08, 2010

District 9 - Movie Review

My interest in District 9 was piqued when I read a rave review by Roger Ebert, who praised the film for “giving us aliens to remind us not everyone who comes in a spaceship need be angelic, octopod or stainless steel.” Plus the fact that this movie managed to stand its own in the box-office despite being released on the same date as “Inglourious Basterds” also pretty much made it mandatory for me to catch this movie sometime soon. Call it poetic justice that I managed to see this almost immediately after the Basterds.

More than 25 yrs after a large alien spaceship starts hovering over Johannesburg, close to 2 million aliens are now well settled in District 9. Sometime around mid-2010, Multinational United, MNU which is in charge of policing District 9 and the Govt decide to relocate these aliens to District 10 outside of Johannesburg city. The movie begins with Wikus van de Merwe, an MNU field operative, who is in charge of the relocation efforts, starting off on his efforts of serving eviction notices to the ‘prawns’, as the aliens are derogatorily called by the residents of Jo’burg. While this entire exercise goes horribly wrong, Wikus himself is seriously affected as he accidentally sprays some alien liquid on his face. He slowly begins to transform into a prawn himself and unwittingly becomes a victim of a corporate conspiracy by MNU to try and harvest the immense power of alien weaponry (which can be activated only the prawns themselves).

Wikus manages to escape from his captors, and has to rely on Christopher, the prawn who was actually collecting the liquid when Wikus ended up spraying it on himself. What follows in the rest of the movie is the unfolding of a plot by Christopher to try and energize his own smaller spacecraft to dock with the mothership, the Nigerian mafia in District 9 trying to capture Wikus to try and use his ‘alien abilities’ to use the alien weaponry and MNU’s relentless pursuit to capture Wikus for their own purposes.

The movie ends with a nicely scripted and picturized action sequence, which could probably hold its own against any regular action movie. And the last 20 odd minutes of this movie puts it straight in the ‘science fiction action movie’ genre. All in all, a must watch movie for anybody who likes a good story, however unbelievable it might be.

What makes this movie interesting from a film-making point of view is the way in which it uses the documentary format of narrating the story. Snippets of interviews from Wikus’ colleagues, family and friends are used to tell us the story. CCTV footage from various locations such as MNU offices, ATM machines, MNU choppers, news cameras etc are interspersed at all the right places in the movie which gives it a completely different feel from any other movie which I have seen so far. And the casting of the completely unknown Sharlto Copley in the role of Wikus is a brainwave by any stretch of imagination.

Some of the themes that this movie deals with are relevant even for interpersonal relationships between humans. The sheer volumes of mistrust and hatred shown by the humans towards prawns (especially given the setting of South Africa) reminds us more than once of the apartheid policies followed in that country, not too long ago. While the movie itself dabbles in the genre of science fiction, the under-currents of the themes of racial profiling, corporate conspiracies, sheer callousness of governments of using other species as experimental specimens are all themes which remain with us after we finish watching the movie.

LAMBScore for this movie

Monday, January 04, 2010

Inglourious Basterds - Movie Review

After quite a few false starts, namely missing out on buying movie tickets on time before the movie left theaters in Hyderabad, getting hold of a few rotten prints of the movie where the audio and the video were not in sync, laziness and selection of other notable movies to watch before this one, and missing out on having the Missus as company to watch the movie, I finally got around to watching “Inglourious Basterds” yesterday, and man, was the wait worth it or what. A self professed Quentin Tarantino fan myself, I found this to be one of his most entertaining and fun movies to watch. In my opinion, this probably comes only behind “Reservoir Dogs” in my list of all time fave Tarantino movies.

The movie deals with two separate plots to assassinate the top Nazi political leadership, one planned by the owner of a French cinema and the other masterminded by a group of American soldiers who are called “The Basterds”. While the Frenchwoman finds herself in fortuitous circumstances in terms of actually managing to get almost all the top Nazi brass in her theatre for a high profile premiere of a German movie, the Basterds on the other hand get this assignment purely on the basis of their ruthless Nazi-scalping (quite literally) exploits in France.

Now, anybody familiar with the Tarantino school of filmmaking would immediately realize that when events like war, shootouts, scalping, etc are picturized by him, they are quite literally almost like the real thing. However, what makes these sequences worth watching is the sheer poetic fashion in which they unfurl on the screen. While some of them happen in slow motion with soul-stirring music playing in the background, others happen so suddenly and without warning that it takes at least 10-15 seconds for the viewer to figure out what actually happened. Now, given this deadly combination of speed, suddenness and poetry of motion, suffice to say that most of the action sequences in this movie are awesome.

This movie has its usual share of offbeat Tarantino-esque characters in the form of Lt. Aldo Raine (wonderfully under-played by Brad Pitt), the quiet determined Shosanna (played well by Melanie Laurent), the double agent actress Bridget Von Hammersmark (played by Diane Kruger) and a wonderful villain, Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, a revelation in this particular role). And this ensemble cast adds a lot of their talents, personality to the wonderful scrip that Tarantino came up for his version of the ‘spaghetti western/macaroni combat’ movie that the Basterds actually is. Christoph Waltz in particular stands out for his wonderful portrayal of Col. Landa and the long list of Supporting Actor awards and nominations are proof of this.

If not for anything else, I would watch this movie for the wonderful liberties that Tarantino has taken with WW-II history, and the sheer audacity that he has shown in almost all elements of this movie. A sure-shot winner in his long portfolio of movies.

LAMBScore for this movie